Turquoiselle, Tanith Lee [100 best novels of all time .TXT] 📗

then. We’ll be richthen, your mum and me. And you. We’ll all be rich, in a big red house inHampstead. It’ll be warm astoast, and your mummy can have a chandelier in every room to light it all up.Ah, me boy.” And the big face, still tan from a summer working on the roads, abig undrunken face full of large green eyes and sheer approval and involvement,laughing down into Carver’s child’s face, so Carver the child began also tolaugh. And the man and he sat by the long cracked window, a French door once,and gazed out at the bare black and grey of a ruinous garden. “Look,” said thewarm, dirty, gentle bear, “look – a duckie birdl” And there was. There reallywas. A duck with a head green as jade and coriander, and outspread swimmer’swings, flying low over the darkling sky.

Carver,(theman)stopped under the trees of elsewhere and Present Time.

Hestared no longer inwards at the memory of Croft. He stared back down and downthe staircase of a million adult years, to that moment in November. Was that his father,then?

Hisfather – beforedespair and alcohol got their fangs and barbs into him and changed him to whathe later became, a violently drunken abuser, a monster from hell. Him? Then?

Ascreen shivered inside Carver’s brain. Instead of images numbers flowed across.1. 1. 1. 1. 4. 4. 4. 4.

Seventeen

Anjeela Mervillewas standing under a tree, motionless. Her garments matched or coincided withthe woodland – dull green, faded black – he might not have seen her, but somefreak of punctured daylight had caught her eyes. They shone like bluishmercury. The luminous eyes of a doll, or a cat.

Carverhalted. He did and said nothing, for a moment. But this was, in the mostbizarre way, like a direct piece of continuity, following somehow instantly onthe events that had already passed. Even, indescribably, on the fragment ofmemory that involved his father. Even on the random and ceaseless snatches ofnumbers and codes.

“Hello,”she said, “Car.”

Hedid not speak. He stood looking at her.

Sheseemed – different. Her hair again? Yes, it was longer. Just below hershoulders now, thick and curling, liquorice black. More copious extensions,then. But she was slimmer too. Perhaps how she had dressed? Corsetingbeneath...

Shesaid, “How are you, Car?”

“DidCroft send you?”

“No.Croft is scampering about his section in high good humour. No one sent me.”

“Youjust came after me, then.”

“Notexactly.”

“Thenwhat exactly?”

Shesaid, “Say my name.”

Hedid not. He said, “There are enough games already.”

Shesaid, “Aren’t there, though. I thought perhaps we could just play, without a gameat all.”

Heturned away, and began to take long strides through the trees. So far this ‘walk’,which he reckoned had used up about three more hours, had yielded nothing. Froma rise, on a single occasion, he had seen south-westward through the trees, andhad a view of the up-and-down building, the sea beyond, and the sun graduallydescending, discernible only by a metallic bruise behind the purple cloudbank.And he had found no boundary barrier, no sign he was approaching any. Therewere no sentries either, of any sort he could detect or concretely suspect. Anobject fixed high up on a trunk had, for a second, convinced him he at last glimpseda surveillance device. But it was a piece of metal foil, perhaps pulled up thereby a magpie, or other gleam-keen bird-thief.

Thesun must be near to going down, he thought. But this twilight did not seem toalter. Only she had altered.Anjeela. Presumably gleam-keen on a bit of rustic fuckery in the fern.

Likememory, she was walking beside him now. She had caught up and kept pace withhim, matching his long strides without apparent effort. Whatever weight orhair–length, she was fit then. In any sense, he supposed.

“Saymy name, Car,” she repeated in a while, her breathing serene and unhurried.

“Haveyou forgotten it?”

“Haveyou?”

“Yes,”he said, ridiculously as a kid of thirteen. “I’ve forgotten your name.”

“Anjeela,”she said.

“Merville,”he said.

“AJ–”prompting.

“MV,”he finished. He stopped again and turned again to look down the few inches intoher face. (She was also slightly taller than he had remembered, or wore liftsin her shoes.)

Acrosshis mind, vivid enough as if physically it had flown by between them, thenumber chain flashed on-off on-off. Code – the code – Judges. Market.Always. Able –

Sheinterrupted.

“Iwant to show you something, Car,” she said. Her voice was velvet. Panthervoice. He could scent her, cinnamon and honey, ambergris and pure coffee.

Heshoved her, with a roughness he never expressed against women, into aconvenient tree trunk. “All right. Why not. Undo your pants,” he said.

Andshe gave her panther laugh. Not intimidated, not resisting, not eager orwilling or vulnerable, not useable at all.

“Iwant,” she said, “to show you this.”

Andshe held up her smoke-brown hand, slender and beautifully articulated by itsbones and tendons, gemmed with its five mother-of-pearl nails. One of which–

Oneof which was – was it? – altering. Was – elongating – growing, pushing out ofthe forefinger, slim, straight, displaying its manicured oval tip –

“What–?” he said.

“Justwatch, Car,” she softly said.

Thepearl nail, still smoothly couth, now two-three inches in length – but the –finger too – the finger was effortlessly elongating now, not distorting, merelylengthening, becoming the finger of some non-human being – a finger six inches,one hundred and fifty millimetres – long. The finger ceased to grow. The nailhad ceased. They lay there, against his forearm, darker than his shirtsleeve. Aperfect finger, not ugly. Only – only – ex-tend-ed. Alien.

“Yousee it,” she said.

“Somedrug. I don’t know how. In the coffee?” Or in her perfume –?

“Nodrug, Car. This is really happening.”

“It’ssome trick, then.” He brought his own left hand across and clamped the alienfinger and its nail between his own. It moved. The faintest quiver. It waswarm, flexible; made of flesh and bone and coordinated. “How?” he said. “Howare you doing that?”

“Likethis,” she said.

Hiseyes skipped back to her face, and saw the single strand of shining hairagainst her cheek, still attached, but its end slipping down, passing like acord of silk unravelling, unwinding. The end fell on to her throat, slidserpentine down again over her right breast. When it was long enough to reach herwaist it twisted, and lay still.

Closedagainst his palm he felt the forefinger flex again. He let